Who’s Watching the Bear?

Who’s Watching the Bear?

One day a few years ago when Apollo, a local Kermode Spirit Bear, was younger, I had a sense that he was going to show up one afternoon. I had a nose for how often Apollo would come around to check up on the many different berries available to him on the property. So this day, I was going to be prepared.

I applied a heavy amount of bug dope on to keep the hoards of pacific northwest rainforest mosquitoes from eating me alive. I was preparing to wait an hour or so, behind a brush blind, to get a blessed keepsake picture of him.

After the hour was over I was being chewed up voraciously by the mosquitoes black fly’s gnats and no see-um’s, I was getting impatient. Apollo should have been here by now.

I tried to twist around to see if maybe he was coming down the main road, as he sometimes does. Lo and behold, as I turned around, there he was! Right behind me, staring directly at me. He was watching me, watching him!

By the time I got my hands on my camera and turned around, Apollo was long gone. It’s really amazing how a totally white bear can disappear so quickly in the woods. All I get to say is that I didn’t get the shot that day. I did get a whole lot of bug bites though.

-Harreson